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GARTNER RESEARCH EARLY STAGE ENTERPRISE CHATBOT INSIGHTS THE REVOLUTION OF CONVERSATIONS

20 October 2017

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Gartner Group have recently identified the following four emergent trends for using Chatbots in the Enterprise:

1. Call Center Help Desk: Chatbots are reducing the cost of customer queries by handling more and more of the customer conversations, with handoffs to help desk workers when appropriate.

2. Operational Approvals: Chatbots are reducing the cost of coordination for facilitating supervisory responses to operational exceptions, where there is a need for a human intervention to decide “approve”, “deny” or “defer”.

3. Workflow Logistics: Chatbots are streamlining parts of the workflow by orchestrating work in response to an emergent need. This can include triggers from systems or from sensors (ala Internet of Things).

4. Scheduling Logistics: Chatbots are reducing the cost of coordination for scheduling meetings as they interact with messaging and diary systems.

Gartner projects that more than 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human by 2020. In my opinion, this prediction seems excessively high. However, the sentiment that citizen, customer, employee and supplier relationships are going to fundamentally
change is correct.

The blended solution of Chatbot and workforce conversations will revolutionize the way we do services. This does not mean “85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human”, because the fundamental shift is a rethink of experiences and relationships.

It is inevitable that some enterprises will simply want to leverage just the basic economics of Chatbots such as:

Access 24/7 for every day of the year

Unlimited parallel conversations

Available via omnichannels (all necessary touchpoints)

Support greater self-management, self-service and self-sufficiency

Enable up-skilling, down-skilling and workforce agility

These are just a few of the benefits, but there are a lot more as the “revolution in conversations” gains momentum over the next few years.

Please could you share the title of the source report (Gartner) for this post.

I'd say one of the key benefits should be consistent, better and auditable decision/communication. But clearly the risks in managing customer relationship is a lack of empathy / emotional bond. This might be ok on the mass market, but bots will need to support
relationship managers as well rather than just customers at the top end.

In some countries (Nordics) they have already crossed 90% interactions being digital. Other countries/regions like the UK are certainly moving that way...